Economic Efficiency Measurement and Analysis of Shrimp Farming in Hormozgan Province , Iran.

Shrimpculture has been considered as a way to increase investment, production, employment and foreign incomes in agricultue economic sector since 5 year socioeconomic plans started. Natural potentials , unused lands, marine and brakishwater resources and socio-economics benefits of shrimp culture industy is caused shrimp farming to be a priority of fisheries development for the second , third and forth development plan in fisheries sub-sector. Due to increased shrimp production costs and consequently cost price, the shrimp farmers have lost their advantage in the domestic and international markets. In this connection, production efficiency enhancement can be a way to decrease shrimp cost price. In order to investigate and the determine affective factors on production costs and profitability of shrimp culture, this study was carried out in the Hormozgan province over the years 2007- 2008. by using a comprehensive questionnaire and a random sampling method, a total of 50 farmers from Hormozgan province located on the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea were interwied, however 26 questionnaires were confirmed. An expert trained team including economist, statistician and shrimp aqua-culturist completed the questionnaires. In this study, using Data Envelope Analysis (DEA) and an input-oriented model technical and scale efficiency of 26 shrimp farms have been measured in the Hormozgan province in the year 2007. Results show that 54% of shrimp farms are technically inefficient, whereas minimum and average pure technical efficiency are 0.69 and 0.92 respectively. Also 77% of shrimp farms have scale inefficiency and minimum and average of scale efficiency are 0.59 and 0.90 respectively. In addition, 4% of shrimp farms have increasing return to scale, whereas 73% of them have increasing return to scale. As a result, shrimp production costs can be more reduced using economy of scale.